Is ‘Shortcut’ the New Excel? MIT Startup Behind Viral Tool Thinks So

The lowly spreadsheet is getting an agentic AI upgrade.

Fundamental Research Labs, an artificial intelligence startup launched out of MIT, has created Shortcut, a system of AI agents that can do multi-step work on Excel, such as creating discounted cash flow models in finance.

The user writes a prompt in natural language and uploads documents for the AI agents to “read.” The group of AI agents behind the tool then gets to work to create business models, financial statements and the like.

Its prowess is enough to make green-shaded accountants drop their pencils: Shortcut has gone viral, racking up 3.5 million views on X. It has led to the creation of Shortcut as a business division under the parent.

“Shortcut can already take on complex workflows that people spend hours doing in spreadsheets,” said Fundamental Research Co-founder and Shortcut CEO Nico Christie. “It’s not about replacing Excel — it’s about replacing the need to open Excel in the first place.”

Asked how Shortcut is different from Microsoft Copilot that is in Excel, Christie told PYMNTS that Copilot does specific tasks the user tells it to do, like write formulas or create charts.

Shortcut does full financial modeling and analysis. In one example, Christie wanted to know if he should invest in a company. This was his prompt to Shortcut: “Build a DCF model, use their 10k, do deep research on them, do sensitivity analysis, and a Monte Carlo simulation.” Oh and build it like a KKR associate,” according to his post on X.

Christie, who has a background in finance, said Shortcut scores over 80% on cases presented at the Microsoft Excel World Championship, described as a “thrilling” competition among Excel users. Christie said Shortcut finished the cases in about 10 minutes, or 10 times faster than humans.

While businesses are eager to add AI to their operations to streamline processes, they are hesitant to give the technology free rein, according to PYMNTS Intelligence data. AI is generally siloed to specific tasks and humans provide critical input and oversight.

Shortcut is accessed through its website, which is designed to look quite similar to Excel with its green lines and tabs. There is a side bar that opens on the right side where users can prompt the AI agents. Users can also open or upload Excel files on Shortcut, according to Christie.

Unlike macro scripts or cloud-based automation, Shortcut can adapt mid-task if something changes, Christie said. “If a file name is different or a menu option moves, it won’t break — it will figure out what to do next.”

That flexibility, Christie argues, makes it more likely to handle the messy, inconsistent workflows that dominate office life. It also keeps sensitive data on-device, a selling point for regulated industries.

Shortcut can also accept Google Sheet files and its work can be exported to Sheets as well, according to Christie.

See also: Excel’s AI Makeover: Microsoft’s Billion-Dollar Bet on Smarter Spreadsheets

Asked how Shortcut can ensure it doesn’t have errors, Christie said right now it is 90% accurate, which can go up to 95% as the AI model behind the agents learns over time.

“Now, the real question is, ‘will this every be really, fully, perfectly accurate?’ I think in the short term, the answer is no,” Christie said. “What you really need it to be is accurate enough, dramatically faster than you, and very easy to work with, such that when it’s partially wrong, you can iterate on it.”

That said, the AI agents will ask the user questions to clarify the task and also will double-check the results, according to a live demo Christie did during the PYMNTS interview. Moreover, a box on the right side will list all the changes the agents made, so the user can double-check the work.

Also, links to sources will appear alongside results so users can cross-check the answers. “You can click into any hard-coded cell and see exactly the PDF that it came from,” Christie added.

Still, some early users have complained on community boards. “Shortcut is not useable. It makes repeated errors, random formulaic errors, fails to fix them and creates new ones. Have used it for a couple days, and its yet to produce a non-hallucinating sheet. You basically have to do a cell audit before you can rely on it,” wrote a user named “thebigmusic” on Reddit.

As for complaints about broken formula links and formatting issues, Christie said the links are “mostly now fixed” and formatting will be tackled at the next set of improvements.

Anthropic’s Claude is the large language model powering Shortcut but the team also is developing their own frontier AI model, which can be a pricey endeavor. Earlier this month, Fundamental Research raised $33 million in a Series A round from a16z, Prosus Ventures, Stripe Co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison and other investors.

Fundamental Research, whose co-founder and CEO is former MIT assistant professor Robert Yang, didn’t start out intending to target business productivity software.

Its technology traces back to its early experiments in games. Founded as LyfeGame and later renamed Altera.AL, the company built Project Sid, a large-scale simulation in which thousands of AI agents developed professions, followed laws and even spread religions. Its PIANO architecture let agents process multiple information streams in real time, a brain-inspired design aimed at giving them social intelligence.

By late 2024, the company had moved beyond games, competing on OSWorld, the leading benchmark for AI agents that use computers. Within a month, Fundamental’s agents scored about 48% on OSWorld tasks, the highest public performance on record. Afterwards, Christie led a team that began building Shortcut to tackle real-world workflows.

Shortcut offers a free trial period and three paid plans: $40 a month for Pro, $200 a month for Max and $500 a month per seat for Teams.

What’s next? For Fundamental Research, “we’re going to be building a really strong multi-agent framework to allow large agent organizations to do knowledge work together that progress towards a product,” Christie said. “That’ll be a many, many year journey.”

“For Shortcut, I’m going to tackle the most important business software in the world, and I think I’ll make a big dent,” Christie added.

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